you still love her
I can see it in your eyes
the truth is all that I can hear
every time you lie

Rachel Berry was no fool. She was as intelligent as she was talented, and that made her extremely intelligent. She could tell when people were lying, and she liked to believe that she had a sixth sense about things. She was extremely in tune with the relationships in the Glee club, a fact that she prided herself on. She could tell that the baby wasn’t Finn’s far before anyone told her – she just liked to keep things secret. Rachel had been the first to realize that Santana and Brittany’s relationship was something a bit more than platonic, and she had known, just at first glance, that Kurt wasn’t into Mercedes for the sole reason that she just wasn’t his type (read: she wasn’t a boy). Rachel liked to believe that she was intuitive, and after Jesse, she had been more intuitive with her own relationships. Some may have called it paranoia, but she called it being careful.

At first, she had given Finn the benefit of the doubt. She had tried to pretend that he would get over this small bit of feelings he still had left for his ex-girlfriend, for his sake and hers. She smiled and kissed him and enjoyed it while it was there, because Finn was sweet, and handsome, and although he was kind of naïve, Rachel could see why she had first been attracted to him. But soon things began to unravel. He called her Quinn. It was an accident, and Rachel knew that, but it didn’t change the fact that it kind of hurt. She hadn’t forgiven him for that for a few days, but they had pushed past it and everything seemed okay.

Then, she had caught him staring at her during Glee rehearsal. It was brief, because she had only turned away for a second, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see him glancing over at her, sitting next to Sam, as usual. It wasn’t the fact that he was glancing over at her that bothered Rachel; it was the way he was looking at her. There was this look of adoration and longing that he never had when he looked at Rachel that made her stomach turn with jealousy and worry. She could tell that the feelings he still harbored for Quinn weren’t as small as Rachel had originally thought.

The thing that took the cake, however, was the way he said ‘I love you’. Rachel could tell a bad lie at twenty paces, and Finn was a bad liar, worse than most. He said I love you to her in the way he told his mom. He loved Rachel, she was sure of that. She was also sure he wasn’t in love with her anymore. She doubted he had ever been. What they had was something exciting at the beginning, that quickly blossomed into a close friendship, and gone nowhere else. He was still in love with Quinn. Rachel had tried to push away that thought for a long time, because thinking it meant confirming it, but she had to come to terms with it. Finn still loved Quinn. Finn was still in love with Quinn. It hurt. But the truth hurt. There was nothing Rachel Berry couldn’t handle. A broken heart was like a paper cut to her. It stung, and she got over it.

She bowed out of the relationship gracefully, not accusing him of anything, but making a quiet hint that now he could date whoever he wanted, because he was free. While the look on his face as he realized what that meant wasn’t exactly a good moment for Rachel, she smiled and dealt with it, kissing his forehead goodbye. As she left his bedroom, she smiled to herself, touching the gold star that hung around her neck. Sometimes, stars had to let others go, and Rachel Berry was definitely a star.